Welcome to the Official Home of Thinky the Dragon
Everyone’s seen the amazing T-Rex video of the Bobble Headed T-Rex dragon illusion. But did you know that the T-Rex is a clone copy of our original Thinky the Dragon?
Now you do.
I’m Bill Ritchie, I founded ThinkFun in 1985 with my wife Andrea Barthello. Our original company name was Binary Arts, we make Rush Hour and Zingo and many other puzzles and games.
In 1993 there occurred a remarkable conference in Atlanta, called the Gathering for Gardner, after the Scientific American magazine Mathematical Games columnist Martin Gardner. This turned out to be a coming out party for the most creative minds of a generation. We shared ideas and stories and watched demonstrations and made connections and were inspired, it was incredible.
One of the participants was Jerry Andrus, a magician and illusionist and American mystic. Jerry’s Paradox Box was one of the conference hits.
The second Gathering for Gardner was in 1996. Martin attended this one himself, and we (Binary Arts) presented him with an Alice and Wonderland themed Vanish Puzzle that year.
We also had been ruminating about Jerry Andrus and his Paradox Box, our designer WAG drew up a colored-marker version of an illusion based on the Paradox Box in the theme of a dragon. This was the first Thinky the Dragon, and Jerry loved it!
For the third Gathering for Gardner in 1998, we (Binary Arts) gave a Thinky the Dragon handout to all conference attendees, this was a big hit! Since then Thinky has been circling the globe and showing up in the funniest places.
We at ThinkFun have been actively promoting Thinky the Dragon. Thinky was the official spokesdragon for the Gathering for Gardner Celebration of Mind Parties last October; we actually built a 15 foot high version of the Dragon in Second Life for one of the Celebration Parties!
ThinkFun is also partnering with www.CWIST.com, a project learning community for kids and parents. They have built a Thinky the Dragon CWIST Workshop where kids learn how to download, cut out, and fold and tape together your own Thinky the Dragon plus learn stuff along the way.
And we have been promoting Thinky as our own ThinkFun spokesdragon as well. Our DPF download file that we are offering you is beautifully produced and easy to use, we’re proud of our little guy.
The T-Rex dragon showed up out of nowhere and hit a home run, god bless him. But we own this idea, we’re not going away.
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